Something happened. I stopped by the pharmacy to pick up a prescription, and a nurse asked me if I’d like to get my flu shot. HECK NO, I thought, because I find injections and blood draws to be terrifying and I like to have a few days to scrape together some courage. I thought October was the earliest that flu shots were available, and no way was this sneak attack on my mind in summer! What I actually said was, Sure, let’s just get it done. I know when I’m being a coward and I’m actively trying to suppress that part of myself. That’s why I started training in martial arts for the first time back in January. I didn’t realize that these two unrelated things would turn out to be connected.

First off, for the skeptics, let me share why I get the flu shot in the first place. I used to avoid it, just like, once upon a time, I believed that homeopathy must be valid because they sell homeopathic products at the natural foods store. (*facepalm*) Then one year my husband got a flu shot at work. I considered getting one, but I “never got around to it” because of course I would do anything to avoid having a needle anywhere near my body. I got really sick that year and my husband didn’t. I was down for eight days while he continued to go to work, whistling a happy tune and obviously feeling fine. That does it, I thought. I’m getting the flu shot every year from here on out.

I’ve gotten the flu shot every year for the past, I think, five years now? I don’t know what terrifying things people think will happen to them if they get a flu shot, but none of them have happened to me. I’ve been immunized against everything I can be, including tetanus and hepatitis, two common infections that I really, really don’t want. Intellectually, I’m convinced of the benefits of herd immunity, and my contribution to protecting little infants, cancer patients, and other immune-compromised people who can’t get vaccinated even if they want to.

Emotionally, it’s still been very tough for me to march myself in there and ask for an injection. Even the smell of rubbing alcohol would make me woozy. The sight of rubber tubing or any of the other apparatus, and even the mint-green color so common on scrubs would set me off. I would have to put my head between my knees afterward, even if I had the chance to lie down during the procedure.

Last year, when I got my flu shot, my husband and I walked from the hospital to the movie theater about a half mile down the street. I was sitting in the lobby with my head between my knees for twenty minutes, but if we stayed longer, we would miss our show. I was so wobbly that just a block from the hospital, I had to sit down in the grass and wait while he went to a convenience store and got me something to raise my blood sugar.

When I say that I have a needle phobia, I’m really not exaggerating.

That’s why it surprised me so much when I got my flu shot this year. As we walked into the ordinary conference room where this operation seemed to be proceeding, I informed the nurse that I get needle reaction and that I’d have to cover my face. She said that happened all the time and not to worry about it. She swiped my arm with rubbing alcohol, I braced myself, the needle went in... and maybe one second later, it was over. That’s it? I asked. I couldn’t believe it. The bandage went on and I was released.

I kept waiting for something to happen. I thought I’d feel the usual nauseating rush of dizziness that I’ve had since childhood. I was sure I’d have to sit there with my head between my knees and possibly risk missing my bus. I thought I’d embarrass myself, like I do every year, by collapsing and making a spectacle of myself. But... it was... totally fine. I can’t even really say it hurt.

My husband and I texted about it. “I think martial arts is doing things to me,” I said. “I know it is,” he replied.

What’s going on with this? What is happening to me after eight months of martial arts training in Muay Thai and Krav Maga?

Stress inoculation is one factor. This is the simple idea that repeated stressors gradually become less stressful through exposure. It’s the principle behind why Toastmasters helps people like me who are afraid of public speaking. It’s also quite true for physical pain, as I’ve learned in the mat room. I have been accidentally socked in the nose, mouth, and eye multiple times, and found that it either barely bothers me or actively seems funny. This never would have been true in the past.

Body composition may come into play. I have more muscle than I ever have before. There may be other components, too, like bone density, vascularity (more and stronger blood vessels), glycogen storage, or hormone balance. No idea, but it’s objectively testable.

Another possible factor is my resting heart rate. My resting heart rate has apparently been abnormally high since middle school. I didn’t really make the connection until I started wearing an Apple Watch. Every prior time that a health professional expressed concern about my heart rate, we would decide together that my fast walking to the facility was responsible. I couldn’t buy that rationale anymore, not with three years of tracking data. At 43 years of age, I felt like I needed to take my heart health as seriously as possible, and I researched how to improve my resting heart rate. HIIT, or high intensity interval training, came up as a viable method. That’s what we do in martial arts, especially during warmups. I’ve been training long enough now to notice a discernible downward trend in my numbers, and it’s possible that this adjustment has impacted my anxiety level around my needle phobia.

Maybe I’ve just been psyching myself out all this time. Maybe spending days or weeks dreading an impending injection would just put me in a stress state. I’m not sure about that. One year in college, I was in the health center, and records indicated that I was due for a tetanus shot. They had my ID and wouldn’t let me leave until I got it done! (Maybe I could have signed some form releasing them from liability or insisting that I refused a tetanus shot, I don’t know. But I did understand that I needed one and intended to comply... laaaaterrrrr...). I didn’t have any time to slink away and mentally compose myself, and I have to say that my panic and pain were just as intense as any other time, maybe more so, because tetanus shots hurt.

What I think is one of the biggest factors here is that my pain threshold is significantly higher. Some stuff I’ve been reading recently suggests that pain is controlled more by the central nervous system than it is by any specific body part, injury, or illness. This makes a lot of sense and feels consistent with my experience recovering from fibromyalgia. It also seems to fit with my impression that athletes in general have a higher pain threshold. I assumed they started with some kind of genetic tendency to feel less pain, allowing them to crash into each other in team sports. Now I believe the opposite, that sports training increases the pain threshold, and that this transformation may be available to anyone at any age.

Further, I have a suspicion that this is some kind of long-lasting neurological change. The reason I think this is that after a year or so of distance running, I quit having a problem with depression. It’s never come back, even though I basically quit running a few years ago. There seems to be something really interesting going on with a certain level of very strenuous physical activity over an extended time period. If running can change what felt like a personality-level issue with something as serious as depression, then it feels consistent that martial arts can change what also felt like a character-deep, yet minor, issue with a needle phobia.

At this point, I’m training out of fascination and curiosity, because there’s so much to learn, because I have friends at my gym, and because it’s starting to be fun. There are enough interesting physical and possibly neurological changes that I’m also following those trends with keen attention and interest.

Life is an endless tidal wave of BS. Accepting that is a great starting place. It certainly makes Stoic philosophy feel more relevant. There’s this other point, about the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, which I explain thus:

Life is pain

If there is pain, it has a source

If it has a source, the source can be identified

If the source can be identified, it can be eliminated.

Sometimes, pain (trauma, drama, difficulty, suffering) comes in the form of natural disasters or external events of vast scale. We cope as well as we can. Usually, though, difficulty comes from within, from our expectations and assumptions. We cause ourselves significant grief by setting up a lot of demands and rules that other people and the world in general never seem to quite meet. This is part of how we convince ourselves to believe in difficulty.

It’s difficult when we want people to behave in a certain way, and they won’t.

It’s difficult when we expect certain actions to lead to certain results, and they don’t.

It’s difficult when we expect change to come on its own, in a form we find acceptable, and it doesn’t.

It’s difficult when we insist on getting the results without the effort, and we can’t.

What if, instead, we believed in ease? What if we believed that really, things are simple and straightforward?

Nobody is quite as good at overcomplicating and overthinking things as I am. See? I’ve claimed this extravagant level of difficulty for myself. I buy into it as a part of my identity. I’m proud of it in a way. Look at me! I’m an insomniac! I’m a stress case! I’m tightly wound! I have a thin skin, too! I pledge allegiance to my difficulties.

I got curious about all of this, and started wondering what would happen if I just tried to Do the Obvious instead. Whenever I wanted to try something new, I would first ask, what is the most obvious advice that anyone would give to a beginner? What’s the checklist? What are the obvious first steps? Is there a FAQ? Is there a manual?

It got even better when I started asking whether there were basic checklists for things I was already doing. What if I just looked at my daily life and tried making it as easy as possible?

That question led to the systematic application of minimalism to every part of my life. More love, less of whatever else this is. Wherever I can get rid of stress or self-imposed obstacles, that’s a place where I can let more love in and breathe more love out.

In a way, belief in difficulty is a belief in fate, in evil, and in hopelessness. Let’s throw our hands in the air and collectively sigh OH WELL. Nothing could be done. Well, that sucked.

I claim that with free will and determination, we can do anything. We can’t always stop every bad thing from happening, like a hurricane, but then not every natural disaster is “bad.” Is it bad when there’s a giant storm on the planet Jupiter? Is it bad when there’s a hurricane in the middle of the sea if it never reaches land? If we define something as “bad” only when it causes human suffering, then can’t we do more to eliminate the human suffering that we can affect today?

Starting with our own?

The thing about belief in difficulty is that it restricts us. When we feel caught up in stress and drama of the ordinary sort, we feel too burned out and powerless to do anything to change our own situation, much less anyone else’s. We can easily slip into a position where we’re making our problems INTO someone else’s. Our desire to vent and complain becomes someone else’s headache. Our refusal to address our own problems until they reach breaking point can become an urgent crisis for someone else. When we feel that we have no free will, then we feel like our actions don’t matter. As if that were possible. As if it were possible to even exist without making an impact on the world!

As an example, I had a bad breakup once, many years ago. Looking back, the immediate cause was that I got sucked into a lot of negativity and drama on an internet listserv. This was long before we had a pop culture understanding of trolling or flame wars. I didn’t have the perspective to see that the hours I spent reading and responding to these threads was a complete waste of time that did nothing to serve me or anyone else. My boyfriend was the one person I thought I could talk to, the one place where I went to process all this junk. He tried. He asked me why I was talking to these people and made a few suggestions, which I took to mean that he didn’t understand and wasn’t being a good listener. I bought into a reality in which an email list was more important than my romantic partner’s companionship. In retrospect, I never would have spent five minutes on this activity. Think of all the good books I could have read instead.

Life is easier for middle-aged people in so many ways. I’d never want to be that young again, or at least not without all my hard-won experience.

I no longer believe in the difficulty of feeding trolls. I no longer believe in the difficulty of reading the comments or engaging with naysayers.

I no longer believe in the difficulty of the chronic pain and fatigue that I suffered as a young person. This might sound cruel or flippant to someone who is currently living that reality. I only mention it because every source I consulted when I was ill affirmed that I always would be, and there was nothing I could ever do about it. This is patently false. I got better, and probably other people could, too.

I no longer believe in the difficulty of poverty, and again, see above. It wasn’t instant, but I eventually learned how to earn more and get a job with benefits. There is plenty for everyone in this world, and it’s only our belief in scarcity that restricts that natural abundance. We feel threatened by the very idea of having to share, and that’s the first sign.

I no longer believe in the difficulty of poor body image. That comes from strong self-efficacy. I have it within me to learn how to do anything, to eventually reach any goal I set for myself, to hold myself accountable, and to go after what I want. I’m allowed to build muscle, get sweaty and muddy, explore the world, expand my abilities, and look however I want. If someone else has a problem with that, why should I care? My body isn’t about you.

There are difficulties that still captivate my attention. As I recognize them, I work on them. I simply question myself, Is that really true? Do I want it to be?

Wherever I have a difficulty, it’s certainly a smaller, less significant one than someone else’s. If it’s difficulty that bothers me, then logically I should care about the worst difficulties, not just those that affect me. Injustice where it’s worst, not injustice that I feel personally. Crisis where it’s worst, not just mine.

There’s a guy sitting two tables from me who is wearing glasses with broken frames. One arm is completely missing and they’re sitting catty-whampus across his nose. He’s tilting his head to the side so they don’t fall off. This is a guy who believes in difficulty! Surely there are several charities that could help him, or maybe someone would be willing to fix his glasses for free if he asked nicely. Maybe he could buy another pair at Goodwill and scavenge an arm, or fit his existing lenses in different frames. Maybe he could find a twig or a piece of cardboard and tape it into place. A thousand things would be easier than what he’s doing right now. He’s playing with his smartphone, so I somehow wonder whether money is the problem?

Looking for a demonstration of a principle, evidence is usually close to hand. I feel lucky that I happened to be writing about this topic as this guy with the one-armed glasses sits nearby. Well, that was easy! I turn my attention to areas of life where everything is effortless and easy. I always have the opportunity to focus on my breathing. I always have the opportunity to appreciate my loved ones. I always have the opportunity to let go of my past hurts. I always have the opportunity to look to my own behavior, change my own perspective, and improve my own attitude.

This is bad. THIS is the kind of thing that makes me feel old. Here I am trying to do the splits, and I can barely get my legs in a V. How am I ever supposed to turn a cartwheel at this rate? I’m looking at this book with a bunch of granny ladies grinning while they stretch, elbows on the floor, and feeling like I have barely half their agility. Darn it! I’m reading Even the StiffestPeopleCan Do the Splits, and right now it feels like I’m going to need a lot more than four weeks.

I’m a pretty bendy person. Other people may have trouble touching their toes, but I can fold over and put my palms on the floor. I can sit down, stretch my legs in front of me, and grab the arches of my feet. No problem! I can reach one hand over my shoulder and the other up my back and clasp my fingers. I can do a headstand and I can spin two hula hoops at once. I like to think of myself as more agile than most.

So why is it so hard to do the splits?

This is a non-trivial problem, dumb as it may sound. My tight hips are likely behind some chronic problems. My current working hypothesis is that spending a month (or six) stretching and improving my mobility in this area will help to resolve these other issues. If I’m wrong, well, I probably won’t be any worse off, and I’ll be able to do the splits, which is rad.

What are these tight hip problems?

For one, my glutes on one side or the other will sometimes seize up so much that I start limping. This is bad for someone in her forties, and I imagine it would only get worse with each decade that goes by. I do NOT want to find out what it’s like to have a permanent limp.

Next, I sometimes have some pretty fierce plantar fasciitis pain in my heel or the arch of my foot. This is weirdly worse when I’ve been sedentary; it didn’t bother me at all during my months of marathon training, and it’s more likely to flare up after my second rest day in a row. It was worst the first year after I quit my day job, when I basically slept all day. It disappeared after I became obsessed with the hula hoop. Right now it seems to have been reactivated by my martial arts training. A couple of times it’s woken me up in the middle of the night.

I was sidelined from running by persistent ankle pain. Two MRIs and six months of physical therapy didn’t really resolve it. Talking to a personal trainer at the gym revealed some insights, and two months of weekly shiatsu massage focusing on my shins finally eliminated the ankle pain. The trainer said it originated in hip instability, and that endurance running tends to lead to weak hip flexors, glutes, quads, and core. True, that feels true.

Martial arts training is definitely, visibly building these areas. Hundreds of snap kicks and jump squats will do a lot for your hip flexors, if nothing else! I’m finding, though, that I have a lot of trouble with roundhouse kicks, and that I feel a pinch when I do it at the correct angle that my classmates don’t seem to be experiencing. Even if I get nothing else from working on the splits, it seems obvious that it will help improve my roundhouse kick.

I gotta tell you, though, it hurts. I was able to train into the headstand in only two weeks, and that just felt like fun. (Except for the one night when I toppled over, smacked my caboose on the floor, and woke up in the morning with a limp that lasted about three hours). Doing the recommended stretches to work into the splits? Is NOT fun. It’s so sore.

Where do tight hips come from? Sitting, I imagine. I spent almost all my time sitting from my teenage years through my early thirties, partly due to my secretarial job. Or driving. I think driving causes more tightness on one side because we’re pressing on the gas pedal and leaning to one side to shift gears. Also we’re wearing seatbelts that cross over one side, and we tend to wear our bags on the same shoulder all the time, weighing one side down more than the other. These are extremely common issues, and they suggest that a lot of people are having some of the same issues that I am.

I can also claim years of running and cycling as contributors. As much as I love racking up the miles in my endurance sports, they cause repetitive movement along only one axis. Forward forward forward. I want to do a fifty-mile ultramarathon for my fiftieth birthday, and it makes sense to work on my hip tightness before setting out on that type of training. I’ll be super annoyed if I have to cancel my plans due to a recurrence of the same ankle problem I had before. This is what I think about while I’m sitting on the floor, trying to coax my unwilling muscles to loosen up. Legs, I need more from you!

This is where I remind myself that twenty years ago, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. I had trouble just getting through the day, and sometimes I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning without help. I’ve come a long way! I can’t help but wonder if doing this type of stretching back then would have helped. I sure wish I had, because with twenty years of daily practice anybody could probably do pretty much anything. Isn’t that what physical therapy is, after all?

Daily practice, daily practice. My fitness role models are all over sixty years of age, and many are over eighty. This is because I’m very concerned that Old Me should be able to get around, climb stairs, sit on the floor and get up again, and carry things. She deserves to keep her independence. I remind myself that if I live to my eighties, I’ll have fifteen thousand days to get down and stretch. If that isn’t enough time for my muscles and tendons to adapt, maybe by then I can just download my consciousness into a robotic avatar and sign off on the whole project.

Spike, seven years after his diagnosis with Addison’s, improbably snoozing

If you have only one spoon today, I’m honored that you’re using it to read this. If you are fortunate enough not to know what “spoons” refer to, I’ll briefly explain that it’s a subjective unit of measure for people with chronic pain and fatigue issues, or other hidden illnesses. I’d like to share some thoughts that came up when I recently got some reader mail thanking me for writing about my experience beating fibromyalgia. (I see you! <3)

It puzzles me that virtually all of the online presence for invisible illnesses seems to be about emotional support and painstakingly tutoring “well” people in the details of our diagnoses. Aren’t we... trying to feel better? Shouldn’t we see a disease as an opponent, not a roommate or a spouse? Shouldn’t we be trying to GET MORE SPOONS??? Stop sleeping with the enemy and tell it to pack its bags because it is out of here.

First off, the concept of chronic illness drives me crazy. I believe that it is unscientific for a doctor or anyone else in the medical community to describe something as “incurable.” Just because nobody has cured it YET doesn’t mean it will never happen. Isn’t your entire job to try to cure and treat illnesses?

I’m pro-science. Let’s not get confused about that. I always get my flu shot and I’ll promote vaccinations to anyone who will listen. If a doctor gives me a prescription for antibiotics, I fill it and I take the full course. If I get a printout of instructions to do physical therapy exercises, or anything else, I follow those instructions. I’m obedient and open to input. This is why it upsets me so much when I’m treated with condescension by doctors.

The doctor who patted me on the shoulder and assured me that there were in fact zero ways I could modify my diet, exercise, or lifestyle to impact my thyroid disease. - FALSE

The doctor who told me he doesn’t “believe in germ theory” - UHHHH....

The doctor who told me I must have been misdiagnosed because “people don’t get better from fibromyalgia” and she knew, because her sister-in-law has it. She told me not to mention that diagnosis to doctors, because they would “automatically write you off.” Then she tried to prescribe me an anti-depressant, although I am not depressed. - HUH?

The point I’m trying to make is that just because you waited forty minutes for a fifteen-minute time slot with one overworked, obtuse physician who wasn’t able to help you, does not then mean that you are beyond help. Just because you’ve suffered for many years doesn’t mean you always will. Just because your pain is extreme does not mean it will always be that way, or that it will get worse. There are no reasons to believe that a physical illness will remain permanent and debilitating until the end of time.

I always felt that if I had to suffer, then let it be toward a purpose. Take notes on my condition and track my metrics. Record everything I tried on my search for relief and wellness. Use these notes to build a better treatment plan for the next generation of sufferers.

Then I take that attitude to my primary care physician, who invalidates my position. I’m game, try me! How many people like me constitute “anecdotal evidence” that is 100% disregarded by the medical community? How many more are laboring under false stories of sickness because this information is withheld from them?

I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia at age 23. I also had a thyroid nodule that disappeared without treatment. I suffered debilitating migraines for about ten years. I would say that I actively manage sleep issues that began 35 years ago, and I’m successful now about 90% of the time. Since then I’ve run a marathon, completed a mud run, and gone on several multi-day expeditions carrying a 40+ pound backpack. Now I’m studying the martial arts of Krav Maga and Muay Thai kickboxing. Four hours a week I repeatedly catch kicks, punches, and shoves, get thrown onto the ground, and do a full circuit-training workout. If I can think of any more extreme sport that demonstrates how fully I beat fibromyalgia, I might try it.

I’m a middle-aged woman with a history of multiple chronic illnesses. I crushed them.

I’m a formerly obese woman who fully recovered from thyroid disease. Now I wear a size XS.

How is it possible for someone of my age bracket and health history to be in better shape than I was twenty years ago?

How is it possible, when my doctors told me it wasn’t? How is it possible, when my doctors brushed off and invalidated my experiences? How is it possible, when I never took medication or had surgery?

There are three reasons.

First, I didn’t have a choice. My ex-husband divorced me when he realized how sick I was. I didn’t even have health insurance, much less another human who could help me get out of bed or fill in for tasks I couldn’t do. I had to get up and take care of myself because I was the only one I had.

Second, most of my insights and epiphanies and realizations and hypotheses came from TOTAL ACCIDENTS and coincidences. I would notice something that didn’t seem to make sense, and as it caught my attention, I would start to track more details while I tried to figure it out.

Third, being told that something is impossible is something that deeply annoys me. It’s stupid! It’s a wrong thought. It is unscientific, if I might be pardoned for repeating myself. I’ll trust a doctor who tells me to get a tetanus shot or change bandages or take eye drops. I’ll never, ever trust a doctor who tells me I’m stuck with some health condition for the rest of my life.

Nobody needs to run an obstacle course or go backpacking or start taking karate classes. That’s a high bar. All I’m asking is that we question this chronic illness paradigm. I ask that we allow for the possibility that we may one day be free. What if we’ve been misdiagnosed? What if we become “anecdotal” and have a spontaneous remission? What if we age out, as it often happens with migraines, because our hormone levels change over time? What if new research leads to new treatments, new medications, or new understanding of root cause?

Please stop sleeping with the enemy. Illness is not your body part. Illness is not one of your internal organs. Illness is not your heritage. Perfect health is your birthright. Track your metrics and keep asking questions until you have all the spoons you could ever want.

​Technically, I’m on Day 369, but who’s counting? I don’t have to count how many days in a row I make my activity goals. For one thing, I wear a fitness tracker. More importantly, my body counts. My muscles and my heart and lungs are tracking every step I take. I can’t lie to my own insides.

There is something really satisfying about scrolling back and seeing all of these completed activity rings. The design worked. When I first received this Apple Watch as a gift for my fortieth birthday, I was still gimping around after an ankle injury. My athletic pursuits included sitting around and muttering to myself while reading ultramarathon manuals. On the first day, the record shows that I walked 1,044 steps and burned 30 calories. Fantastic! ...for a baby...

I got my first pedometer over a decade ago. They were pretty primitive in the early days. All they did was track motion. You could game them by shaking them back and forth. They also reset if they got dropped, and mine fell out of my pocket so many times that I had to start using a safety pin. I got one with a clip and that kept falling off, too. Memories... I remember the first day I hit what I thought was an important fitness milestone, and I ran off to show my friends.

A THOUSAND STEPS!

Look, guys!

Um, the goal is TEN thousand steps. A thousand steps is like a quarter mile.

...Oh.

Let’s just say I’ve come a long way in twelve years. When I started out, it took me months to build to walking a thousand steps in a day. My daily average for 2017 is 11,055 steps, 4.9 miles, four flights of stairs, and 48 minutes working out.

Another interesting tidbit is that my daily average calorie burn from physical activity is: 407. This is why it’s impossible to “lose weight” simply through exercise. A bagel is about 245 calories, and a Costco muffin is almost 650. I could literally add ONE snack or make ONE lousy, inefficient food choice each day and completely wipe out whatever I burned from my workout.

(Flip this by thinking like a marathon runner. “If I eat this muffin that is nearly as big as my head, I can run at least 6 miles later”)

I used to think I could just skip this whole thing, you know, standing up and moving around. After all, doctors had told me all sorts of things about my health that included “exercise intolerant.” There is nothing like a diagnosed thyroid condition to give one a get-out-of-gym-free card for life, am I right? Then I went to the mall with my Nana, who was 75 at the time, and I watched in dismay as she struggled to get on the escalator. She was still working, still driving, still living a full life in every way. But stepping onto an automatic staircase with a handrail was physically challenging and intimidating for her. Suddenly, I saw myself in this context, as a younger version of my mother and grandmother. This was to be my future, too.

Unless I did something about it.

The kind of exercise that I do today would not have been possible for my female ancestors. By that I mean that they would not have been allowed. Women were legally excluded from competing in races like I do, we were legally excluded from gym memberships like I have had, we could not legally go out in public wearing the kind of workout clothes that I wear today. This probably has a lot to do with why there was no feminine tradition of strenuous exercise in my family. I had no examples and I had no idea what to do.

Start by walking. Walk 1% farther and 1% faster.

Start by paying attention to what you do during the day. Not what you “do” as in how busy you are, but what you DO, as in how much you physically move your body around. Notice your range of motion. Visualize your path through life. Where do you go and what do you see? Same stuff all the time? Hmm, seems boring.

Looking back at my activity level in my twenties, I feel embarrassed. I don’t move around twice as much as I did twenty years ago, I move around more than ten times as much! Middle-aged me could kick younger me’s butt without hardly trying. I just wish, I wish, I wish, I wish there were a way that I could go back in time and teach Twenties Me everything that Forties Me knows. Maybe I wouldn’t have had to spend so much time feeling tired, ill, and trapped in chronic pain. We had a happy ending, though. The future arrived and brought some pretty great technology with it.

Just a few years from now, activity trackers are going to be available for everything. They’re going to test blood glucose and monitor our skin for sun damage. I predict that one day, gamers will be the fittest people of all, because they’ll be controlling their avatars with haptic body suits or some kind of hologram thing that requires leaping, rolling, and backflips. Until then, what we have now has been enough to get at least one sedentary, obese thyroid patient with fibromyalgia up and moving.

I do it to myself just often enough to remind myself why I walk the line the majority of the time. What do I do? I relax, I push my limits, I convince myself that I’m just a regular robust person who can do everything without boundaries. There’s a grace period. Then it catches up with me. Maybe I notice when I slip into Yellow. Usually I ignore the warning signs until I’m back in Orange. Then I go into panic mode, because I still do remember what it’s like to spend every day in Red.

What am I talking about? I'm talking about chronic pain and the various oddball symptoms that I experience along with it. What is true for me probably is not true for most people. What is true for me probably also is not true for other sufferers of chronic pain and fatigue, because not all of us have the same conditions or the same symptoms. My recommendation is always to track metrics, to keep careful records, so that you can find patterns and change your inputs to attempt to mitigate your results. I think that if even .0001% of my experience can be influenced by my behavior, then it’s worth the attempt.

Yellow: I get a headache, or I stay up a few hours late, or I overeat past a 7 out of 10 on the hunger scale, or my weight goes up more than 2 pounds, or I catch a cold

Orange: I get headaches more than one day in a week, or I get a migraine, or I have shooting pains, or I experience fragrance sensitivity, or my weight goes up more than 4 pounds, or I feel full-body aches consistent with my fibromyalgia days, or I start feeling chilly all the time and I can’t warm up, or I have a night terror

Red: Symptomatic nearly every day, migraines on a regular basis, night terrors on a regular basis, lethargic, dizzy spells, get sick and seem to get sick with something else days after I thought I was better, often simply bedridden with pain and exhaustion, too tired or ill to read, lose a patch of hair on my scalp an inch across

Right now, I’m back in Orange and I’m really angry with myself. Sure, I have plenty of reasons. We went on two vacations in a row, we went camping and slept on the ground in the cold, I carried 40 pounds of luggage around for a few days, we changed time zones, I got bitten by insects. These are problems that I can ordinarily correct by sleeping an extra hour or two per night for a few days after a trip.

Ah, but this time, it seems that I pushed a little too far for a little too long.

Whether it’s a cause, a symptom, or both, my body weight is perfectly correlated with my various other symptoms. It’s something I have to watch. Again, whether this is or is not true for other people is up to them to discover for themselves through meticulously tracking their own health metrics. It’s not a body image thing, it’s not a self-esteem thing. For me, for me personally, it’s a functionality thing.

We came back from Wyoming, the camping part of our vacation, and I was right at the weigh-in I had before the trip, within two-tenths of a pound. Despite all the sleeping on the ground in the cold and all the carrying of the forty-pound backpack and the fifteen-mile hike, I felt fine.

Then we went to Las Vegas for three nights. I came back four pounds heavier, and I was a mess.

How’d I do it? I Ate All the Things. In Wyoming, we were eating a lot of starchy backpacking food, but the portions were controlled and we had crucifers every day. In Las Vegas? Vegas, well. I think I had a half-cup of broccoli. Other than that, it was all stuff I almost never eat: Airport food! Potato chips! Salty mixed nuts! French fries! Hot chocolate! Cookies! Juice with HFCS! Appetizers! Huge portions! Desserts every day! We even had “chicken and waffles” with syrup at VegeNation. No schedule whatsoever. You can start to see where those four pounds came from.

Four pounds doesn’t sound like much, does it?

If you can gain four pounds and not notice, good for you. If you can gain four pounds and not feel immediate adverse health effects, good for you. That’s awesome. If that is true in your life, by all means, celebrate in a way that is meaningful to you. But please don’t tell me about it. I’ve had more than my fill of conversations where other people brag to me about their resilience in these matters. I’m a fragile person and I have to walk a fine line.

I gained four pounds, and what happened?

Shooting pains from my heel to my thigh, triggering my restless leg syndrome to the point that my husband noticed from across the room

Low-grade headache every day for four days straight

Weirdly sensitive to fragrance - I smelled someone’s nail polish outdoors and it seemed like I was “still smelling it” an hour later. Then it was someone’s body spray. This hasn’t been a problem for me for about a decade.

Waking up twice a night

Constant feeling of irritability

One full day of “brain fog” in which I struggled to stay awake, much less do any work

Welcome to Orange.

I’m handling this state of affairs aggressively. First, I’m tracking what I eat and making sure my meals are consistent in schedule and portion size each day. So far I’ve dropped 1.8 pounds in a week, which means I have at least another week of Orange to go. Second, I’m eating four cups of cruciferous vegetables a day. Third, I’m taking melatonin on a schedule. I’m still waking up a couple of times a night, and waking up too early, but at least I’m falling asleep on a reasonable schedule. Fourth, I’m exercising an hour a day. In Orange, I can still get a couple of hours of blessed analgesic effect after my workout.

No naps. No anti-inflammatories.

I have strong suspicions that all of my weird symptoms are tied to thyroid function. I had a thyroid nodule when I was 23 that was thought to be cancerous. All the symptoms of disrupted sleep, parasomnia problems, migraine, weight gain, lethargy, brain fog, pain, fatigue, low body temperature, and fragrance sensitivity were fully in place at that time. They’re my flags, indicating that something is off in my world. This is why I make exercise my major priority when I start to slip through Yellow. It’s the one thing that reliably seems to reverse the trend.

When I work out, I don’t feel as cold all the time, the headaches and night terrors disappear, I can sleep through the night and wake up feeling rested, and my energy level goes from a 6 to a 9. I feel like every hour I work out buys me two pain-free hours and an extra hour of solid sleep. That’s why I do it, even when I feel physically horrible and it’s the last thing “my body wants.” I push through and do it because I know I’ll get worse if I don’t.

I’m back in Orange, but I feel like I’m inching back toward Yellow every day. Here’s hoping that if I stay on track, I’ll be back out of crisis mode by the end of the month. It’s my wish that sharing my experiences might be of help to someone else in my situation who is desperately searching for answers. Track everything, be consistent, and keep holding on in the belief that a 1% improvement is always possible.

Flattering as it is to think that body image must be my main reason for working out, that isn’t even on my top ten list. However I look is nothing more than an inescapable side effect of the other things I do. The main reason I work out is that when I stop, even for a day, I feel gimpy and crooked.

Top Ten List of Reasons to Work Out:

10. Getting charged rent for apartment gym and too cheap not to use it

9. Compare myself to fit people 10-50 years older than me

8. Maintain ability to sit on the floor and get back up again

7. Can run up and down stairs during power failures

6. Opportunity to catch up on magazine reading

5. Almost all clothes sold in my size actually fit me

4. Maintain necessary fitness level to go backpacking

3. Save money by owning only one size of clothing

2. Chance to burn off occasional pancakes, cookies, etc.

1. Skip a day and get a kink in my neck.

Being fit is really convenient. It’s worth it just for the annoying problems it eliminates. I took a “rest day” on Saturday and spent the whole day feeling like someone rolled me down a flight of stairs. After my workout the next day, I felt so much better, especially in my neck and shoulder, that my “rest day” was more like a “pest day.”

I’ve had problems with my neck since I was 9 years old. I woke up one morning and couldn’t move my head, and my mom took me to the doctor. A stiff neck could have been a sign of serious problems, and I feel fortunate that I didn’t have any of them. I just slept crooked. This has been a perpetual problem in my life, exacerbated by carrying heavy school bags, commuter bags, and luggage. When I took up running, I was extremely surprised and elated to discover that the thousands of micro-movements from swinging my arms had somehow finally loosened up this stiff neck of mine. Walking helps, too, although it seems to take more miles to reach the necessary amount.

I hurt my ankle in 2014, and I had to quit running for long enough that my neck has started to seize up again. Now I’m back on the elliptical trainer. I’m getting ready to get back on the road again. It’s only been a couple of weeks, but already I’m feeling the difference between workout days and sedentary days.

Loosening tight muscles and extending range of motion are reliable ways I’ve found to make my neck feel better. Another thing that I get from working out is the analgesic, or pain-killing, effect. The first time I felt a runner’s high was the first time I had felt completely pain-free in a dozen years. A radiant, glowing sort of euphoria spread through my entire body. Nothing hurt. Nothing! Nothing hurt anywhere! If it had only happened once I would have thought it was a miracle. It turned out, though, that I could get this beautiful feeling on demand.

It hits me at about the 45-minute mark of very strenuous exercise. I don’t get it from walking. It comes from running at a particular pace, including steep hill climbs and stairs. The analgesic effect tends to last for 2-3 hours after the end of my workout.

I found that running longer distances, starting at the four- to six-mile mark, would give me three or four hours a day of being completely pain-free. It wasn’t just that, though. Swinging my arms thousands of times was loosening my tight neck and shoulders. Running for at least 45 minutes was giving me a few pain-free hours. Running was also improving my posture. The importance of this can hardly be overstated. My weak upper body had my shoulders rolled forward from years of typing and doing data entry all day. New muscle strength helped me to become more upright in my posture even when I was sitting around. The difference shows up clearly in photos.

Running changed my body in other ways, too. I had better posture and more muscle. I had these 3-4 pain-free hours. My neck and shoulders were loosening up. I started to sleep better. I got more restful sleep and I started sleeping longer without waking up. I learned also that I never had an episode of night terrors on a day that I went for a run. As long as I ran at least once every three days, I was protected.

Other things in my life changed. Being pain-free makes every single thing in life look different. I generally started having more energy and being more fun to be around. Sometimes I would run up in the hills and start bellowing random songs or making up song lyrics. Everything seemed funnier. At the worst of my chronic pain problems, my daily mood was probably about a 3 out of 10. As a runner, my daily mood was more like a 9! Everything seemed awesome. I would already be planning my next run while I was still running my current route.

Then it caught up with me. My stupid refusal to spend even five minutes a day stretching, after four years, had resulted in some tight muscles and an overuse injury. I continued to train on it, because I’m stubborn, and because if you keep your exercise-induced analgesia going long enough, you don’t feel the pain you should be feeling when you push your body too hard. It wasn’t until sharp pains started waking me up in the middle of the night that I knew I had to recuperate. The realization of how dumb and self-destructive I had been added to the overall mopey feeling of not being able to run.

Even though my only real exercise in the past two years has been walking 3-8 miles a day, and the occasional yoga session, I’ve kept many of the physical changes that I earned through those years of hard endurance workouts. My posture is still better. My pain threshold feels like a thousand times higher. I haven’t had a migraine in over three years. I’ve only had night terrors twice in that time period. I can still fall asleep a few minutes after going to bed and sleep a full night without melatonin. My body composition still includes more muscle, less fat, and a lower body weight. I still wear the same clothing size I wore when I ran my marathon. I haven’t managed to keep the looser muscles in my neck and shoulders, though. The message for me is still the same: work out or be crooked.

Most days I don't work out. It's true. I don't work out AT ALL. This is the exact kind of thing a thin woman isn't allowed to say. Like I'm going to sit in a restaurant, throwing a giant chimichanga down my gullet and talking very loudly about how I can eat whatever I want, and then they find my body in a back alley because someone in ketosis couldn't bear to listen to another word. Anyway. The entire reason I would talk about something like this is that it touches on so many major fallacies about fitness and weight loss.

First among these is that there are "naturally thin" people. I've even been told that I am one of these fabled creatures, and I laugh because I know differently. The difference between "naturally" thin people and the rest of us is that they acquired habits early in life that the rest of us have to learn as adults. Often, they aren't even fully aware that they do anything different. They eat and move a certain way, as do most or all of their relatives, and they think what is habitual to them is genetic, or a part of their personality. Why should we think differently when even they themselves don't realize the truth?

The answer I most did not want to hear about weight loss is that it's absolutely 100% about what I eat. I had thyroid disease, and I was still able to lose weight by changing my diet, whereas I gained 8 pounds while training for my marathon. Work out because you love it and you want to be strong, not because you have any illusions about weight loss happening at the gym.

Weight loss doesn't happen at the gym! We go to the gym to LIFT weight, not to lose weight.

Or, of course, we don't go to the gym at all.

Don't get me wrong; I love going to the gym. I have several different workouts that I enjoy, and I'll cheerfully choose one based on whether someone is in my way or hogging equipment that I like. I'm always game for learning a new exercise or training with someone else who can teach me something. It keeps things fun. I go through phases of being at the gym for up to 90 minutes at a time, most nights of the week.

And then, of course, I get into long ruts of not going. Like everyone.

What do I do to continue fitting in the same clothing size then? I claim that it's not genetics, so what's the secret?

The secret is, like I said, that weight maintenance is 100% about food, not exercise. I can eat an extra 500 calories in five minutes - it's called 'cake' - and it would take me at least 90 minutes on the elliptical to burn it off. This is partly unfair, because I am a short person with a small frame, so the standard slice of cake is meaner to me than it is to most people. The inverse way to look at this is that, since distance running is my preferred workout, the more I run, the more cake I can burn off. OR, the more cake I eat, the farther I can run!

What if you didn't have a sweet tooth, so much as that you have a previously undiscovered mutant power of endurance sports? Worked for me. *shrug*

The other thing about not working out is that we don't think of our background activity level as "a workout," although IT IS. It most definitely is. For instance, I spent most of the day I wrote this nursing an eye injury and sitting in a waiting room in urgent care. According to my activity tracker, I walked 4.5 miles and climbed five floors' worth of stairs. I was like, "What stairs? Did I climb stairs?" We got rid of our car, so we just walk everywhere, and I don't think of it as working out. Why? Because it's not hard anymore. I get sweaty pretty easily, so if I don't break a sweat, I don't feel like it counts. It's only "a workout" if I feel like I'm pushing myself.

My background activity level is far, far different than it was when I was fat. How so?

I walk about 50% fasterI walk 4-10x farther every day than I did 10 years agoSix miles in a day is fairly common for me nowI climb stairs faster and far more oftenI "bustle" around the houseMy range of motion is much broader: reaching up, crouching down, climbing on stuffI carry heavier weights more oftenI do strenuous tasks myself that I used to ask A Man to do for meI make a point of avoiding sitting downI sleep about 50% moreI don't use my activity level as an excuse to "earn" "treats" (if I want to eat something, I just put it in my pie hole and eat it)I eat basically the same stuff every day, so my intake is predictable while my activities are variable

What I learned the year I ran my marathon was that it takes me 38 miles of running to burn off one pound of fat. It "should" only take 35 miles, which means either I run too slow, or I burn fewer than 100 calories per mile because I'm both slow and small. Either way, it's a moot point. I'm more interested in doing things efficiently because I have a short attention span. Also, once I get curious about what someone else is doing differently than me, I can't let it go; I have to find out.

What is it like to feel strong, fast, and athletic? I wanted to know before I die. I figured I could always change back.

Pushing my physical limits to do an adventure race, go on a multi-day backpacking trek, and run a marathon changed everything I felt about being inside my body. I now know things about my capabilities that I can't un-know. I can eyeball something and know I'm strong enough to pick it up. I look at a map and think of walking somewhere (or running) and I know from experience that I'm quite capable of getting there and back without getting tired. I do things routinely that in the past I wouldn't do under any circumstances.

I used to spend quite a bit of my time nursing a migraine or otherwise experiencing too much fatigue or background pain to do much besides lie in bed trying not to move my forehead. After losing the 35 pounds and learning to eat sufficient micronutrients, suddenly my sleep problems and the migraines just... went away. A certain amount of my background activity level is just reclaimed from former "out of spoons" days. Again, that was 100% dietary.

As a newly athletic person, I now feel that most of my chronic pain and fatigue problems came from chronic sleep deprivation, micronutrient deficiency, and general lack of physical fitness. My body composition included very little muscle. My cardiovascular fitness was very poor. Of course I felt tired and cruddy even on my best days! I get tired just picturing my own posture from that time. I try to send little love messages to Past Me from time to time, but it just annoys her and hurts her feelings. She isn't ready to listen to me yet. I try to tune in more to Future Me, the Elderly Me, and hear what advice she has. It always seems to include getting stronger, building bone density and muscle, and retaining my ability to sit on the floor. Hopefully that won't feel like a workout.

​It happened again just the other day. I got into a conversation with someone I had known socially for some time, a physically fit person who often talks about nutrition and healthy living. She shared that she had been diagnosed with a serious illness and that her doctor had told her there was nothing she could do about it through lifestyle modification. She wasn't any more impressed with this prognosis than I was when I got mine, and she set about it proving it wrong. In her case, it was an autoimmune disorder that can result in weight gain, fatigue, and joint pain, and the only known treatment is a lifetime on medication. Strange that, years later, nobody would guess she had ever been ill.

My radar is always pinging for stories of this nature, and I run across them all the time. Mine was an endocrine disorder. The story I just told involved an autoimmune disorder. Recently, I reviewed Shawn Stevenson's book Sleep Smarter, in which he shares how he reversed his degenerative disk disease. My husband had two herniated disks in his spine, and they healed. My brother broke his back in three places, and not only did his spine heal, but he goes snowboarding like nothing ever happened. These are not conditions like the common cold; these are serious problems. They would have been, anyway, decades in the past. They might still be, for the ordinary sort of person who accepts lame, textbook advice from a conventional physician.

Now, I believe in Western medicine. I'm vaccinated for everything I can be, I get the flu shot, and I'll look forward to more vaccinations as they are developed. If I'm prescribed antibiotics, I take them as directed. I go to the doctor when I have to. That, though, tends to be when I need a rubber stamp on a referral to a specialist. My most recent doctor is no good for much else. When I had my first appointment with her, I told her about my history with overcoming fibromyalgia, and she told me that I must have been misdiagnosed, because "people don't get better from fibromyalgia." She believed this because her own sister-in-law has it. I hope the sister-in-law isn't her patient. I also wonder about a medical training system that teaches physicians to brush off anecdotal reports from patients who healed, rather than enrolling them in some kind of study. Examine me! I'm right here and I'm willing!

One of the biggest issues with the ongoing professional development of physicians is that they spend their days with ill and injured people. Healthy, fit, active people only go to a doctor when there is an immediate need. Therefore, there's no feedback loop of information from people who are succeeding in being well. It's common sense for a doctor to say, Well, this is what tends to happen and doing this for the majority of patients tends to work out okay. It would not be common sense for a doctor to say, This illness derives from the patient's comfort zone, so dramatic lifestyle change will probably be necessary to beat this thing. It doesn't even seem to be common sense for a doctor to say LET'S BEAT THIS THING!

Another issue is that people in the medical field tend to be over-scheduled, exhausted, and burned out. They don't necessarily have time to keep up on the cutting edge of new research. If there were no educational requirements for them to learn anything about nutrition, for example, why and when would they pick up extracurricular information on their own? If they themselves are not models of peak health and fitness, can they really teach their patients how to live this way? I've had precisely one doctor who was anywhere near my fitness level, and she told me I inspired her to train for a triathlon. My dental hygienist told me I inspired her to ride her bike to work. My health professionals take health advice from me, and that's either a great thing or a complete travesty.

The point of all this is that it is UNSCIENTIFIC to tell patients that their conditions are incurable. It is UNSCIENTIFIC to rule out nutrition or physical activity as even remote, fringe possibilities. The real question that should be raised is why anyone would deviate from a diet complete in all necessary micronutrients, and why anyone would remain sedentary for the majority of each day. There is a vast gulf between what research tells us about health, and what our doctors communicate to us. When my doctor condescendingly patted me on the shoulder and told me not to bother with lifestyle modifications, he instead should have encouraged me to do my own research and take detailed notes. I was only twenty-two at the time, and he could even have encouraged me to pursue a career in the health sciences. Instead, what I get from conversations with medical professionals about my remarkable recovery is skepticism and pushback. I'm not supposed to exist, so they act as if I don't.

My advice to anyone who "has a diagnosis" of any kind is to question it. If a doctor told you that what you have is unresponsive to lifestyle modifications, get a new doctor. Certainly nobody can stop you from tracking your own health data and reading as much new research as possible. I'm talking about actual peer-reviewed journal articles, not blogs, although blogs can be included if the blogger can demonstrate results with your specific issue. I accidentally cured myself of fibromyalgia and thyroid disease, but it was published research that led to reversing my problems with insomnia, night terrors, and restless leg syndrome. I also relied on published research to reach a healthy weight. I follow Alzheimer's research because I have had relatives die of that disease, and I believe I can mitigate my risks. I've made a regular habit of reading about new medical research for the last twenty years, and it's paid off abundantly.

The biggest difference between healthy people and chronically ill people, in my experience, is that healthy people refuse to accept a diagnosis as the final answer. We won't tolerate being ill any longer than we must. We never stop looking for more information. We do the utmost to take care of ourselves, eating, exercising, and sleeping as well as we know how. I've met a couple of people who claim they have "never been sick a day in their lives," but almost all of the fit, healthy people in my acquaintance have successfully overcome at least one major health condition. Whether these are supposedly genetic conditions, injuries, or lifestyle illnesses, there is always something one can do besides feel helpless and hopeless. Even if I got a diagnosis (and a second and third opinion) claiming I would die tomorrow, I'd still do everything I could to be the best possible patient and research subject. I need to feel that my pain and suffering matter in some way, that my experience can be used to further research and to help others with the same condition. Being ill doesn't have to mean being a victim. Being told I'm ill doesn't have to mean it's true, or that it stays true.

This body is temporary. I was born into a physical human body that will only be around for a measly few decades, twelve at the most. Nobody has lived to 130 yet, or if they have, nobody documented it. This body I have has certain limits. It can only endure a certain range of temperatures. It can only spend a limited time underwater without specialized equipment. It can only thrive on a limited range of foods, not including bark or pebbles. This body has joints that can only withstand a certain range of motion; its knees don’t want to bend backward. This body has bones that can only tolerate a limited force of impact or pressure. This body can be stopped in its tracks simply by inhaling or ingesting the wrong substance. The body I have won’t last forever, it can’t do everything, and in one way or another it’s inferior to every other animal on the face of the earth. No flight capability, no prehensile tail, no ability to see into the infrared or ultraviolet spectrum, no echolocation, no gills. Still, it’s mine. The body I have is the body I have.

This body has given me some trouble over the years. In my early twenties, I was diagnosed with thyroid disease and fibromyalgia. I had my first migraine at 22, and that became a regular feature of my life for the next fifteen years. There have been other problems: weird moles that had to be biopsied, impacted wisdom teeth, sprains and strains and skinned knees and second-degree sunburns. I’ve walked into stinging nettle and had a fire ant crawl up my pants. At these times, I often wish I were a floating consciousness with no body at all. Why can’t I be me without having to inhabit this inconvenient meat puppet?

The truth is that without the body I have, I would really freak people out. I need a human form to be able to hug people, hold hands, dance, and eat my favorite meals. The body I have makes it possible to participate in conversations. I can see and hear and taste and detect odors, which, alas, isn’t always such a bonus. I have the physical power to intervene, for instance the several times I have chased a toddler who was about to run full-speed into danger. As a floating ghostie I wouldn’t be able to do any of that.

The body I have is a useful vehicle. It’s “me” in almost every important way. It’s what my friends and loved ones recognize when they see me. My physical health, as it turns out, is almost completely responsible for my moods and attitude. When I eat poorly and lapse into sedentary behaviors, I become bored and sullen. The consequences of my less-than-optimal choices rebound and affect everyone I encounter, from those closest to me to the most briefly glimpsed strangers who happen to see my scowling countenance. It turns out that I look really angry when I’m in pain. Treating this human vessel respectfully, feeding it within the range that is biologically appropriate for humans, moving it the required amount, makes me much more pleasant to deal with. It also makes it easier for me to enjoy living in this world for the few decades that I will be here.

When I was ill, I blamed the body I have for all my problems. I didn’t understand that I could impact any of these health issues through my behavior or choices. I didn’t realize I had a choice. I wouldn’t have believed it if someone told me I did. I would have felt that that was a very unsympathetic, even cruel, thing to say. Only after I experienced it did I start to believe that whatever my body is doing on any given day is a snapshot, one frame out of a mind-bendingly long movie. It should be more intuitive than it is, but a body that begins as a single cell, is born into a tiny infant, and then grows continually for two decades is designed for constant change. Why is it so easy to fall into the trap of thinking we are stuck with whatever physical state we are experiencing at one moment on the timeline?​I needed to experience change in this body that I have before I could truly believe it was possible. First the change, then the belief. I could never have taken it on faith from someone else. Now, I see examples of other people who have changed their bodies in adulthood on a daily basis. It’s just like when you buy a new car and then start seeing that make and model everywhere you go. Vehicle, vehicle, same thing. Tens of thousands of people have reversed health conditions, gotten off medication, and/or lost hundreds of pounds. For mysterious reasons, those of us who still have physical issues never believe that we could be a part of this group. Other hominids may be able to change their bodies, but not us. We’re special, special in a bad way. We have been punished by fate and genetics to suffer and have a bad body! We accept this dire sentence, carved into stone by unfeeling deities. We can’t spend more than a couple of days half-heartedly dabbling at one change or another, never enough to convince us that it just might work if we kept going. We think a body must continue as it is, the only changes possible being negative changes. The body I have can sicken and gain weight, but it can’t heal or return to a lean, thriving form, even as I see cuts and scrapes return to quality new skin on a routine basis. Other people who experience healing and increased health must have better bodies than the one that I have.

The body that I have can do amazing things. It remembers to breathe and keep its heart, lungs, and blood moving even when I sleep. It recovers from illness and injury. Every time I have tested it to find out what else it can do, it rises to the occasion and meets the challenge. I’m 40, probably at the halfway mark of my life (if I haven’t passed it already), yet I am still continuing to discover new capabilities. I continue to grow extra muscle and become faster, stronger, and more agile. It feels as though I am aging in reverse. Despite my history of chronic illness, I have started to be satisfied, even impressed, with the body I have.